the Viper Bites Twice
by InsertWittyTypo
Summary: -spoilers-      After the events of Ghost Hunter, Renn and Torak are returning to the old Forest with Wolf, Darkfur and Pebble, to return and visit everyone they've left behind. However, a terrible tragedy awaits them.
1. Smoke in the Camp

The Viper Bites Twice

Disclaimer: I don't own Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, Michelle Paver does. I wish I did though, that would be awesome. Anyway, enjoy!

Dark applied a poultice to Sialot's chest, which an axe had cleaved a huge hole in. it was clear that he and Poi weren't going to live. The Mage's shelter's supplies of medical herbs and roots was running low.

Fin-Kedinn crashed into the shelter. Tearing an arrow out of his shoulder, he gasped, 'Dark, there's no hope for them! We need you to fight out there! Thull and I need more axemen, now!' Dark offered Fin-Kedinn some yarrow leaves for his shoulder, but he slapped his hand away.

Dark yanked his axe out of its sheath and walked out into the smoky, destroyed camp. Three shelters had been set on fire. Bodies from both clans lay scattered. Out of the smoke, a pale-faced Viper clan hunter swung into the attack. Dark dodged back, strafed up behind the hunter and with a powerful swing, buried his axe in the hunter's spine.

After dispatching another hunter, Dark spotted Fin-Kedinn and Thull fighting with the Viper Leader and Mage. He snuck up behind the enemies, winked at Thull, and disembowelled the Viper clan's new Mage with a strong axe swipe. But as Fin-Kedinn and Thull battled it out with the incredibly skilled Viper Leader, five enemy hunters rushed out of the gloom. They mobbed Thull, slicing his throat, legs and face open, and the wound that Fin-Kedinn had received from the demon bear was reopened with an axe swipe.

Roaring with anger and grief for Thull, Dark whirled into the battle. With strong axe attacks he beat them back, cleaving a hole in one of their chests, who fell screaming to the floor and lay still. In the gloom, he made out Bera and Etan fiercely defending the nine-year old Dari, who cowered between them. Etan's bow sang, and a Viper clan dog fell with a shattered skull. Bera threw her slate knife, which buried itself in the chest of one of Dark's four remaining adversaries, who fell and did not stir again.

Dark was on the brink of defeat when a birch-bark horn was sounded, and the Vipers he was fighting retreated into the fog. He threw himself down in the dirt. Fin-Kedinn came to join him. Wincing from his injured leg, he spoke in his powerful voice. 'Dark, you fought well, but I suspect this isn't over.

It wasn't.

The birch-bark horn sounded again, and a throng of at least thirteen Vipers emerged from the fog, clutching spears, axes and knives. Dark stood up, drew his knife, and braced himself. The throng came closer, closer, closer…

Dark fell with an arrow in his right lung. Gasping in pain, he uttered a message to Torak and Renn, hoping his Magecraft would reach their minds.

_Help us… the Vipers… Come, we beg you!_

Impossibly, he saw Boar clan hunters rushing over him and smashing the Vipers back. Half of the enemy fell, and the rest retreated. Before he blacked out, he saw Aki lean over and pick him up, and Ark circling over his head. He felt himself being carried away, then… nothing.

_What next? Ooohhh…_


	2. Another Life

Dark woke up in a Boar clan shelter, with a holly tree's branches swaying above the smoke-hole. Aki was snoring next to him, and Dark made little noise as he kicked himself out of his sleeping-sack, ducked through the low entrance of the shelter and jogged over to a meat-rack, cutting off some raw elk meat - he didn't like salmon cakes - and spit-cooked it over a campfire. Chopping a piece off with his bloodstained knife, he jammed it in his mouth and ate quickly, and he didn't realize until then ho hungry he was. Within minutes, he'd demolished a whole strip of meat, and his stomach was full. Picking a small scrap off the ground, he handed it to Ark, who gobbled it up quickly. Dark smiled. The clans had been calling him 'The White Raven' since he'd arrived from the mountain two summers ago. He remembered the day when he'd met Torak, trussed up in his cave like a wood-grouse…

Torak laughed as Wolf and Pebble sped back and forth through the trees, Darkfur watching them calmly from a rocky ledge, wagging her tail. Hoisting the nine-moons pregnant Renn in his arms, he jogged west- he and Renn were heading back over the Mountain, to see Fin-Kedinn, Dark, all the faces they'd left behind. Wolf loped eagerly ahead, Pebble following with his developed wolf-lope- he was nearly two winters old now, and was fully grown, a spitting image of Wolf at that age. He smiled at fond memories, swimming with Darkfur's pack on the water-lily lake, reaching up and grabbing Wolf's tail…

Torak snapped out of it as Renn gasped out in pain. She grasped her stomach and then grinned. 'I'm being kicked!' Torak laughed again and hoisted her up again- she couldn't keep walking over the rough Forest ground, her stomach had grown too much,- kissed her and carried on west.

Wolf had to admire Tall Tailless. His pack-brother was carrying the pack-sister, who was carrying a cub; Tall Tailless was carrying the pack-sister _and_ a cub to the Mountain where Tall Tailless had been Not-Breath. Wolf shuddered with memories of the Stone-Faced-One. The trees broke and the Mountain towered over Wolf with awesome power. He shrank back into the trees to wait for Tall Tailless. He felt braver with Tall Tailless.

When his pack-brother arrived, the pack-sister was panting and clinging to Tall Tailless's neck. Gently he lay her down on some ferns, and then quickly built a Den around it.

Torak ran his fingers through his mate's hair as he lay her down on the ferns. Bending some ash saplings and lashing them together with nearby willow roots, he began working on a shelter. He filled in the sides of his lean-to with spruce boughs, and waterproofed it with leafmould. He then wove a door, then quickly dragged in their gear and some more boughs for bedding. Acting on instinct, he took Renn's sleeping-sack and unrolled it, laying her gently on top of it, then he made a quick fire with some smouldering horsehoof mushroom and ringed it with stones. Renn groaned in pain, and Torak acted fast. He went to his mate and rubbed her bump, soothing her, whispering assurance. Torak knew what was happening.

Renn was giving birth.

He unrolled his own sleeping-sack and sat behind her, sleeping-sack on his lap, Renn resting her head there. Torak carried on assuring her, massaging her shoulders. Torak struggled to remember what had happened at the last birth he had seen in the Raven clan. What had Bera's mate done? Torak couldn't remember, so he just kept rubbing Renn's shoulders, and his memories came rushing back again…

_Dropping to his knees, he tore at the branches… He shouted her name. She didn't respond… She looked at him without recognition… Outside, the ice storm battered the Forest. He began to shake. The storm had nearly killed Renn. It had nearly killed Renn_. He shuddered at the memories of Eostra he carried. Shadow's corpse crumpled at the edge of the resting place… The eagle owl's empty white eyes…

He remembered when Wolf had avenged Shadow._ Wolf snapped at its wing and brought it down, savaging it to pieces._ Renn's painful groans brought him back from his memories. He and Renn had been through so much together, and if he knew one thing, it was this: He would never leave her.


	3. Dark's Suspicions and Another Clan

_Uhh, sorry this has taken so long but I've been really busy lately. Hope this isn't too bad…_

Torak cradled his baby son in his arms. The baby had his father's wolf eyes, and his mother's short temper, as he had discovered when he tried to wash him in a nearby stream. He recalled his baby's angry yells and red face, and chuckled. Renn was sleeping with her head on Torak's sleeping sack, where she'd been as she had the baby. He nestled his son in his lap, and brushed a stray lock of fiery hair out of Renn's face. Her eyes flickered open and seeing her son, she gave a warm smile. As she sat up, Torak took his sleeping-sack and placed his son inside it, but Renn quickly lifted him out again and placed the baby on her lap.

Torak's gaze flew to the door of the shelter at the sound of a rustle: Wolf was trying to push the door open. Torak opened it and his pack-brother walked in, patted the baby with his paw, then sat in the corner, wagging his tail. Torak whined softly. _There is a cub. Pack-sister is stressed. We head for the Mountain in the Light. _Wolf grunted his understanding and lay down with his head between his paws.

As the night carried on, Torak and Renn were busy deciding on a name. After several hours, the fire had burned low, and they were half-asleep. Renn stroked her son's tiny head and finally said, "I name you Ferak, and you are Raven Clan, as your mother. Welcome to the world." Torak nodded his approval of the name. Renn lay down in her sleeping sack, and Torak leant over to kiss her. They did so for a few moments, then Torak lay down in his own sleeping sack and sank into a deep, dream-filled sleep.

_He arrives in the smoke-filled camp. Half the Ravens he knew so well have fallen, and slumped by the ashes of the long-fire is Renn. Her throat is slashed, a clear symbol daubed in her blood on her forehead: a viper. Next to her Ferak sits, knees pulled to his chest, crying, shivering. Wolf, Darkfur and Pebble are covered in axe-slashes, and arrows fill their chests. Finally, he sees Fin-Kedinn, His chest cut open with a terrible axe stroke. Torak sinks to his knees. Tears well up in his eyes. He screams in grief for those he has lost, and pulls out his blue slate knife. He looks at it through tear-blurred eyes, and grasps it in both hands, ready to plunge it into himself…_

"TORAK!" Renn wrenched the knife from his grasp and tossed it into the remains of the fire. Torak was kneeling underneath a holly tree, several paces from the shelter. Above the holly tree he saw the Mountain of Ghosts, looming, impossibly huge above the rest of the world. It was there that he had defeated Eostra, the Eagle Owl mage, and nearly been Lost himself. He'd met a mysterious boy there, one who went by the name of Dark…

Renn wondered what in the name of the Spirit Torak had been doing. He'd had his father's knife in his hands, about to kill himself! They'd just had a child, possibly one of the best things that can happen to a man. Why would he want to kill himself? She decided to find out. Grabbing Torak by the wrist, she dragged him back into the shelter.

"What were you thinking? You almost died! You are such an idiot!" Torak flashed her a wolfish grin. "But I'm your idiot." Renn rolled her eyes and smiled. "I suppose. Yes, you're my idiot." she leant over and gave him an affectionate kiss. "Now, back to the point. What were you doing?"

"Renn, I have no idea. I was dreaming, and then… I just woke up to you screaming. I can't remember the dream anyway," lied Torak; He remembered the dream as well as he remembered his own name. "Maybe I was just sleepwalking." Renn looked worried.

"It's dangerous, Torak. I don't know what I'd do if you died. I don't know what Ferak would do." She glanced over to her baby, who was curled up with Wolf outside the shelter door. "He'd have to grow up without a father. He, he…" Torak rubbed her shoulder as Renn broke into tears.

Dark sat by the remains of the Raven long-fire, keeping watch over the ruined camp in case the Vipers came back. They'd destroyed so much, with no reason for it. They'd broken just about every single part of clan law, burning shelters, murdering people, violating women, plundering. They'd even taken a child hostage. Dark's train of thought was then interrupted by Aki coming to sit next to him. The Boar Clan boy had grown huge shoulders, and a short beard. Aki offered him a strip of elk meat, but Dark refused, explaining that he'd already eaten. The Boar boy grunted his understanding and kept watch with Dark.

Several times they thought they saw people moving in the trees, but when they ran to investigate, it turned out to be nothing. After several infuriating hours, Dark gave up and decided to go see Fin-Kedinn. The Raven Leader's wound had been sewn back up, but it still looked dangerously red and bloody. Dark stood over the great man, who had tutored and cared for Dark over the past two summers. Suddenly Fin-Kedinn grasped Dark's wrist, and he gazed into the Raven Leader's freezing blue stare. In a surprisingly weak voice, he asked Dark to somehow contact Renn and Torak. Dark explained that he already had, and Fin-Kedinn gave a satisfied sigh.

Dark was just leaving the shelter when Aki gave an alarmed shout and Boar Clan warriors mixed with the remaining Ravens were pouring out into the ruins of the campsite. Dark drew his axe and knife and joined the crowd, sighing. Four words ran through his mind:_ here we go again…_

He whirled into the attack as a Viper man charged him, and with carefully aimed attacks, disarmed the man and sunk his axe in the man's neck._ That's for Thull_, he thought grimly. Beside him, Etan flicked his knife deftly across his opponent's face, who fell immediately. Bera was standing behind with her bow, seriously wounding and sometimes even killing her Viper Clan opponents. Her violence was completely understandable, since her child was captured by the Vipers in the last fight. As the Vipers pressed on, Dark began to grow weary, and as he fought more enemies, he noticed a variable: some of them had red ochre covering their chins, and their clan-tattoos didn't look genuine. After killing one with a good axe stroke, he dragged the corpse out of the fray and rubbed at the ochre on the hunter's chin. It came right off and revealed the spiky tattoo of…

The Bat Clan!


	4. Home Again and a Tragic Death

Torak put out a hand and Renn grabbed it. They were slowly ascending the Mountains that were the gateway to the old forest. Even now, halfway through the High Mountains, they could see a vast ocean of green stretch out below them.

Home.

Torak pulled Renn up, and they took a quick breather on a ledge they'd just reached. Ferak suddenly began crying, and Renn took him from the rawhide harness on Torak's chest and muttered, "He needs feeding." Torak nodded and started a fire with twigs and horsehoof mushroom, while Renn pulled down her jerkin to begin feeding her baby. Her mate was skewering some elk meat and attempting to spit-roast it, by holding it over the fire and turning the stick.

Surprisingly, it worked, and soon Ferak had shut up- being full of milk- and Torak and Renn were enjoying good food. They both stood up and moved to where they could get a good view of the Forest, and sat eating their meat. It wasn't long before Pebble got in under their arms and started whining for it. Torak chuckled and tossed a tiny scrap off the Mountain, then murmured to Pebble (in human talk) "Go get it, I dare you." The young wolf cocked his head, sighed, then trotted over to his mother and father, who were enjoying the climb. Wolf stood up and wagged his tail. _Tailless cub is strong, the old Forest howls to me!_ Torak laughed and then finished his meat. Renn quickly did the same, strapped Ferak back in the harness, and they resumed their journey.

O

Dark recoiled when he saw the tattoo and yelled to Etan, "there's two clans! The Bats are attacking as well! We're outnumbered!" Etan heard the news and his face fell. The Bat Clan were known for combat expertise, he reminded himself as a Boar Clan man went down with a slashed throat. He smashed against a Viper man as he wondered, _Why in the name of the Otherworld won't these guys just lay off?_ He cut down the Viper and quickly advanced into the freed space. This was good, the Raven/Boar alliance was gaining ground. The hours of fighting had actually come to something.

That's when the tables turned for the worse.

Aki screamed out in grief and rage as he saw a Bat Clan hunter slash his father's throat. The knife had cut deep, and when Aki's father put his hand to his throat, it came away completely red. The Boar leader looked at his hand, then slumped to the ground, dead. Aki lashed out with his axe at the Bat hunter next to him, burying it in the young man's skull. His knife went into a Viper woman's chest, buried up to the hilt. She fell. Finally, he reached the man who had killed his father, and stripped to the waist. Boar Clan custom. The man laughed, threw his axe away, and tore his jerkin off, exposing an insanely muscled chest. Aki gulped. The man tossed his knife away. _Ooh, this should be good,_ the Boar boy thought to himself as he flexed his arms.

The Bat hunter grunted and went in with high punches, which Aki knocked aside easily. The man threw a powerful kick, but Aki caught his foot and twisted, spraining the man's ankle. He cried out but kept up his heedless advance, dragging the injured foot. Aki threw some low but meaningful punches to the man's stomach, one of which connected. The man let down his guard for a split second. That was all Aki needed. He aimed a powerful kick to his adversary's face, which sent him sprawling to the ground. Aki the straddled his chest, grabbed the man's head, and with a loud _CRACK_, the man's neck was snapped by a Clan Leader's son. Aki stood up, victorious. As his head cleared, he noticed that the Vipers and Bats had fled. He slumped down on the floor and began sobbing over the corpse of his father.

O

Torak leapt off the last rock into his old Forest, and breathed its leafy scent. He told the Forest how sorry he was for being gone so long, and to accept the new life being brought into its leafy heart. Renn joined him, and told him how glad she was to be back. Ferak began laughing happily, and they both smiled. They then headed south-west, to the Ravens' spring camp.

_WAAAAZZZAAAAPPPPP sorry this update took so long, but if you ACTUALLY want me to write more, please review so I know I'm not writing crap? PLEASE! Anyway, err, thanks to Rawr I'm A Toaster and Lorcan-Grace for reviewing unlike SOME people *glares* anyway, I want to know I'm not boring all your brains out, so R&R now!_


	5. Dark's Discovery

Dark was getting tired. He'd been in the shelter with Aki for hours, trying to calm him. The Boar Clan boy's sobs rang across the whole camp, enveloping everyone in a haze of misery. The loss of Aki's father had lowered the morale of all the fighters, so they'd likely fight worse against the Viper/Bat alliance, and that would have dire consequences for everyone.

Dark didn't want to fight any more. He was constantly coated in grime and blood from the battles, and he was getting cuts and bruises all over his body which made it ache just to stand up. However, it was evident that the Bats and Vipers weren't going to relent any time soon. Despite days of thinking, Dark couldn't think why they'd be attacking, breaking sections of clan law that nobody had broken before. Declaring war on another clan? It was unheard of in the Forest's history.

Aki's sobs brought him out of his thoughts, and he finally gave in, wrapping a hare fur blanket around Aki's muscular shoulders, and leaving the shelter for his own one. He knew he was being selfish, given the loss Aki had sustained, but the noise was annoying everyone. After around an hour of Dark covering his ears with his hands, it seemed that Aki had fallen asleep, and he could almost hear a massive sigh of relief from around the camp. Lying down in his sleeping-sack, Dark soon found he was hungry, and went to look for food.

O

Wolf darted between the trees, feeling the wind of the old Forest run through his pelt. The smells blasted into him: reindeer scratching their head-branches against the trees, creating the delicious tatters of flesh that Wolf adored, a boar in its wallow, otter cubs falling off a bank into the river with a satisfying splash.

It was a beautiful Light, the Hot Bright Eye beaming down on everything, the birds singing, and Tall Tailless, the pack-sister and Small Tailless trailing behind him with Darkfur and the cub. Everything was as it should be.

Wolf slowed to a walk, realising where he was.

The place of the not-aurochs, where the Bitten One had been killed by the Bright Beast-That-Bites-Hot. It was there that he'd found Darkfur again, and they'd hunted horses, blackening their muzzles with the horse-blood.

Wolf stopped to let the pack catch up, smelling that they were a few lopes from the deer pack of taillesses. Tall Tailless was a friend to this pack, and he'd been with them for a few Lights during the search for the Bitten One. As Tall Tailless and the pack _finally_ caught up, Wolf wandered into the great Den, and found some straight trees which grew meat. Taillesses liked these trees, and so did Wolf. He looked around, seized some tree meat in his jaws and darted for the cover of the Forest.

O

Torak and Renn smiled tenderly. Ferak had just laughed for the first time. Not long after this the bushes exploded, and Wolf darted through with a huge piece of reindeer meat in his jaws. He set it down in front of Renn, dipping his muzzle._ For cub,_ he grunted. Torak laughed. "It's for Ferak, apparently. But look, he's just dying to grab it for himself." Renn saw the daring glint in Wolf's amber eyes and laughed. They broke the tree line into the camp of the Red Deer clan.

Before the ecstatic greeting with the clan, the first thing Renn did was replace the meat that Wolf had stolen. Then the clan members began to emerge from the shelters. Durrain then emerged, and sprinted towards them. It was not until after the huge greeting by the whole clan that anyone noticed Ferak in a harness on Darkfur's back. That started it all up again, with the 'congratulations' and the 'he's so handsome' and 'how old is he?' not to mention 'can he talk yet?'. They answered the questions without getting angry. Torak politely asked the leader if they could stay with them for a couple nights as they'd just come over a mountain range.

'We would be honoured, Torak.'

O

Dark tiptoed around sleeping men in the firelight, the meat-racks only a few paces away now. He reached them eventually, and cut some strips of venison to sate his hunger. Munching on meat where he stood, the Raven Mage looked into the trees, and unless he was mistaken, he could see a blue-green light coming from behind a boulder. He brandished his knife and approached it silently.

With his back pressed against the rock, Dark edged closer to the source of light. It was just around the corner now. He whirled, knife pointing at the light, and nearly fell back in shock.

It was a man.

Not a man of flesh and bone, but composed of light. Half a dozen of what appeared to be ethereal wolves circled the light-man's feet, and Dark saw another: a cub, tiny, gnawing on the tip of the man's boot. The great figure bent down and scooped the cub up in his arms, caressing its tiny head.

'Who are you?' Dark inquired, lowering his knife.

'_You. I know you. You are a friend and guide to my son. You are Dark. Shadow incarnate to merge with the light. Raven Mage._' Dark was confused at this, but placed his fists over his heart.

'You appear to want to help us. Who is your son?'

'_Torak of all clans. The spirit walker._' So this was Torak's father, the Wolf Mage, whose name could not be spoken until autumn.

'So you're a Soul-Eater?'

'_NO! I was a Healer. I wanted nothing but peace! Eostra and the others betrayed us. My own brother, Thiazzi, Seshru, Nef and Eostra wanted nothing but domination!_' The Wolf Mage's face had turned to a vicious snarl, then quickly resumed its level, stone-faced stare.

Dark nodded his understanding, and looked up to the Wolf Mage, a look of total determination on his face.

'What do you need me to do?'


End file.
